For those who don't believe the TSA has gone overboard (and continues to do so), read the article in the link below. The height of stupidity just keeps going higher and higher....It proves out the adage - The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has finite limits!

Where does it stop? Closing spotting areas, under the guise of increased security. Now, model rocketry engines. What's next? Something near and dear to you. If you sit back and do nothing, you have no one to blame but yourself!

MxCtrlr
Freight Dogs Anonymous - O.O.T.S.K.

DAMN! This SUCKS! I just had to go to the next higher age bracket in my profile! :-(

"Congress defined an explosive as any chemical mixture or device whose primary or common purpose is to function by explosion"

Now here is an interesting point. If that is indeed how the legislation is worded, then the same increased security measures would be required for, among other things, internatl combustion engines, and the petrol we put in them. After all, the internal combustion engine is a device which is powered by petrol being ignited (exploded) in the cylinders.

If the law is worded like this, then you really have to wonder how much thought US Congress put into it.

V/F

"So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth." - Bahá'u'lláh

The TSA is an agency directly under the control of, and created by, the Homeland Security Act. The topic may be slightly misnamed however, the relevant point is clear - civil liberties being trashed for "increased security". How many civil liberties - the right to be able to photograph aircraft without unnecessary hassles, the right to shoot off a model rocket - how many will we idly allow to be trampled before we speak? Wait for too long or too many and you may not be allowed to voice your displeasure - it will be prohibited in the name of "increased security". This may sound overboard to some but think about it - when is enough, enough? Speak up now while you still have the freedom to do so! Waiting could be fatal. Contact your state and US Representatives, state and US Senators and the Office of Homeland Security and voice your displeasure and abhorrance of these "harmless acts".

VirginFlyer hit the nail on the head (and he's not even from the US!) - how far do you allow wording to dictate to you the loss of your liberties? What if, as in his example, gas was no longer allowed to be transported over the road (because it is definitely explosive? How will you get to work, pay your bills, buy food, etc? Will that be the time when you stand up and, will it be too late?

MxCtrlr
Freight Dogs Anonymous - O.O.T.S.K.

DAMN! This SUCKS! I just had to go to the next higher age bracket in my profile! :-(

It would indeed be very sad to see model rockets banned, as that would be another one of my hobbies taken away by Osama bin Landen. So definitely raise a circus about this before it is considered, but I don't really this this will actually come to be. The following comes from the article cited above.

U.S. Senator Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., intends to introduce legislation as early as this week to make what’s being called a “technical correction” to the Safe Explosives Act so that the material used inside the small motors is removed from the “explosives list.”

If the law is worded like this, then you really have to wonder how much thought US Congress put into it.
----

They didn't put any thought into it, they did not have the time. People were demanding action NOW at ALL COSTS. Many if not most bad laws are made this way. This is why interest groups and whining societies like to call everything a crises. When you think you have a crises, you can act without thinking. And if you don't want to think, the prepackaged solutions those interest groups and pressure groups come up with look really good. Too bad these solutions are often bad for everyone except themselves.

The TSA is good for the democratic party, which used demagogery to force the legislation through. It greatly expands the power of federal employees and their unions - a key democratic power center. The same is true of many older federal agencies like the ATF. They were made to attack a fake crises with fake solutions, all the while giving more power to their political masters.

One has to wonder about the intelligence level of people that we keep sending to Washington. I'm starting to think that the requirements to serve in Congress or be a bureaucrat is an I.Q. no higher than 50.

The US is being run by a bunch of inbred drooling fools. It's only going to get worse when George W starts his S&%$ overseas. I think the list of countries that hate the US is rising by the minute!!!!!! The thing that kills me is that at my work....in ATL.....the people being searched are 90yr old retires going to Vegas and NOT the aircraft cleaners who are wrapped in their burkas where you can only see their face!!!!! You could pack a mean bunch of explosives under one of those.
S

As usual, the rest of the free world had restricted this "harmless" passtime for decades.
The USA is the only country I know where anyone can legally build and launch an ICBM from his back yard if he wants to without second thought to what it might do to the place it comes down again.

In many countries model rocketry isn't allowed at all, and where it is rockets can only be launched by military personel from specially designated areas.
When you want to launch your rocket, you make an appointment and are scheduled to a military life fire range where soldiers show you where to set up. They will then handle all the explosives (though they may give you the honour of pushing the button).

By way of comparison, in New Zealand you can buy model rockets over the counter. You are not however allowed to fire them off in your backyard, but must go to a designated area (Ngatea was the closest one to Auckland, to my knowledge).

I don't know what the regulations are like in Australia,

V/F

"So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth." - Bahá'u'lláh

I have had it with the Anti-Americanism on this board! We are in a serious situation, this reaction is not un necessary. Anybody else out there had an airliner smash into their financial center lately?

Model rocketry is so safe that even litigation-phobic schools in the USA use it all the time. Unfortunatly, not everyone who is as ignorant as you is just an anonymous poster on some bulliten board. Some run the TSA and ATF. Some of these beauraucrats with no sense of proportion whatsoever. Many times the decision on what gets banned and what is not is done pretty much on a knee-jerk basis. Model rocketry is one of the safest hobbys there is. This is a statistically proven fact.

Any government that bans model rocketry and yet allows motercycling, even with a helmet, has got some serious problems with understanding risk. Heck, even baseball is more dangerous than model rocketry. I remember as a kid I was far more afraid of being a batter facing a high-school senior pitcher than I was afraid of my model rockets. For good reason. Because thousands of children are seriously injured by playing baseball every year - and this includes many who followed all applicable precautions. Model rocketry produces only a handfull of burns and broken windows - and the VERY FEW times this happens, it is because someone did not use common sense or follow the rules.

Or if you arn't familiar with baseball, try just being a spectator at an English soccer match. Anyone who skips a model rocket launch to even watch one of these ought to have his head examined beforehand. Because if he gets caught in a riot, there might not be much of his head left to examine afterwards.

NONE of what I or others have said defending the safety of model rocketry applies if you decide to make your own rocket engines. This is especially true if you decide to do this on your own without an EXPERIENCED EXPERT to look over your shoulder. You don't just need advise - you need supervision because advise can be misunderstood. Even then, you are taking a significant risk. MANY people have been maimed and killed while making their own fuel or engines. Prepackaged, professionally-built engines made model rocketry a safe hobby. The "Rocket Boys"were lucky. And they would have used factory built engines also, if they were available to them at that time.

There are many veniel sins in model rocketry, such as not having a large enough field, not having an adequate recovery device, etc. These are not likely to hurt you - though there is a small risk and they damage the reputation of the hobby. But there is one mortal sin. And it is mortal in a very literal sense - you take the serious risk of death from it if you try it. Don't make your own engines or fuel. And if you are dumb enough to do so, be aware of the risk you are taking and get expert supervision.

In fact, one of the dumbest things about what the ATF is doing is that it may destroy the manufacture of the very kind of pre-packaged rocket engines that have made the hobby safe. The few people who remain in the hobby afterwards will be forced to make their own fuel+engines and some will be killed in so doing. People are responsible for their own actions, so I won't put their blood on the ATF's head. But I can and will tar them and congress with hypocrisy and inneptitude. They build their own beauraucratic empires in the name of safety and security, but this action (allong with many of their other idiocies) will almost certainly cause more deaths than it prevents. I hope all the extra secretaries, agents and power are worth it for THEM- because it is costing US dearly.

**The thing that kills me is that at my work....in ATL.....the people being searched are 90yr old retires going to Vegas and NOT the aircraft cleaners who are wrapped in their burkas where you can only see their face!!!!! You could pack a mean bunch of explosives under one of those.**

You are right TU154M, I have constantly pissed and moaned about this day after day everytime TSA is brought up. I work at DTW and any Arabic people reading this, I am not coming down on you by saying you all are terrorists, but Detroit area has the largest Arabic population in the country and there are Al Quiada, Hezbollah and other terrorist cells right in our Detroit area...

Yet, TSA allows Arabic people to go through the checkpoint without searching the male or female headresses, yet they will make a 5 year old girl with a Winnie the Pooh hat take her hat off.

Maybe I am ethnocentric, but I don't care about the Muslim customs about removing headgear as not allowed by Allah... this is the United States... you need to conform to OUR laws and not bring up lawsuits everytime one of your women is asked to remove her headress.. there are back rooms and female TSA workers that can search you.

The thing that pisses me off about our politically correct society is that we keep giving in to other cultures, yet we give Granny a cavity search because she is a citizen of the United States and was raised under our culture.

Maybe I sound a little rough on the middle easterners, I don't know but those 19 men on Sept 11 were not Italian, Australian, British or Japanese.

I usally try to stay out of these you suck no you suck more posts, but damn thoes fu*!@$ TSA rent a cops that failed are just pissing me off beyond belief!!!!!!! Get a grip on reality you stupid inbreeded TSA wish you auctally had a life agents. Don't single me out as a terriost and have me stand out infront of everyone at the MIA airport because my belt set your metal dector off. And to the asshole TSA that stoled my cell phone because you were convinced it was a bomb well hope you are enjoying not being able to use it!!! I think its time for a total TSA and airport revamp before we have a total melt down of are airport security system. Ok I feel a lot better now.

The right decision at the wrong time, is still a wrong decision. "Hal Carr"

Your tax dollars are paying for these clowns. I believe at most airports they start out at $15.00 an hour which is a pretty darn good living in today's economy, while supervisors make $18 plus an hour and they are non union.

I thought at least these guys would need an education to work there.

The only positive I see that came out of TSA is that you have to be a U.S. citizen to work for them... which is unlike Argenbright which hired Yemeni nationals and could amount of DTW's old security were Arabic and yes they let their buddies thru... I seen non Arabs set off alarms and they would get wanded, but if an Arab set off an alarm, the Arabic screeners would turn a blind eye...

oh wait... TSA does that too because they are afraid of a discrimination suit.

I thought that the TSA idea would be good at first, but I was wrong

At DTW's International Arrivals there are six security lanes, only 3 would often be open when the old company was there and the backups wouldn't be too bad. When TSA came in they opened up 6 lanes and the backups were horrendous.

I thought you needed an education to work at TSA, but the workers there look like they were hired off of the Cass Corridor (real ghetto area of Detroit) or from some of the nearby trailor parks... one of the security women is so big she has to turn sideways to walk thru the detector and she is out of breath by the time she walks from the employee snack room in Macnamara's International transfer area to the checkpoint which is all of about 30 feet. How can she chase down someone who breached?

25 VonRichtofen
: Now I'm not an expert of what's going on in the US (I'm in Canada) but I have flown through several US airports since the random searches started. It

26 Speedport
: If the TSA sees expanding gas expelling from a small tube as a threat, what’s next? Flatulence?

27 Aloges
: I don't know if this has been said earlier (bit too lazy to read it all...), but AFAIK model rocketry is not entirely prohibited in my country, which

28 MxCtrlr
: Herein lies the problem, as described by VonRichtofen and others, the TSA is so worried about a lawsuit for 'racial profiling', that they themselves a

29 HlywdCatft
: Thats not going to stop people from shooting off model rockets... I would just advise anyone who has rockets to stock up on the engines now. As for mo

30 HlywdCatft
: Was this another brilliant idea by Tom "Go out and buy duct tape and plastic to protect yourselves from chemical weapons" Ridge?

31 ScottysAir
: MxCtrlr, Right. This is exactly you should need get GED or High School diploma, too. And but, I will go on the GED soon into fall at Arizona. This is

32 Hmmmm...
: Sure the authorities are out to lunch. Intuition tells me that every third arab working in the cleaning and baggage department of a major airline has

33 MxCtrlr
: First off, by no means do I want to trivialize The Holocaust. I am not comparing the impact of anything the TSA has done, or will do, to those horrend

34 Hmmmm...
: When you have to preface your words with a disclaimer like that, your point is not a point at all. I won't bother explaining why comparing the men and

35 MxCtrlr
: Hmmmm... I didn't think that making such a disclaimer, since there are some VERY thin-skinned people on discussion boards, like this one, lessened the

36 HlywdCatft
: I kind of knew soon after 9-11 the government was going to try to take away rights, i am not talking about spotting, I mean bigger issues like our sec

37 Hmmmm...
: You see more threat from your own government than you do from terrorists. That puts you in the same category as those human shield protesters in Iraq.

38 HlywdCatft
: In 1776 we were under constant attack from the British when America first became a country. What would Jefferson, Washington and Franklin and the othe

39 Hmmmm...
: The most fundamental right, of all humans, not just Americans, is the right to safety and security. Without those two, all other "rights" have no foun

40 MxCtrlr
: Again, Hmmmm..., you have missed the point. It's not about rocket motors, its about the fact that the terrorists whole idea was to change the fundamen

41 Hmmmm...
: You are back-pedalling now. You started off with a warning about the government taking away more and more rights until a dark day approaches and we ha

42 MxCtrlr
: Looking back from post #1 to now, I don't see any backpeddling. If there is any backpeddling, it is on your part coming from speaking to me like I'm s

43 Airhead711
: Hmmmmmm... I don't think anyone here has a problem with the government taking acts to protect the security of the country.Whats being said is that the

44 HlywdCatft
: **The most fundamental right, of all humans, not just Americans, is the right to safety and security. Without those two, all other "rights" have no fo

45 Hmmmm...
: What should also be noted here is that the Islamic Jihad that has been declared on us is not truly "Islamic", it is Al-Qaeda's Jihad. Irrelevant. Thos

46 HlywdCatft
: **Because it's so easy to bitch about the US government when you are safe in your bed every night. You take your safety and security for granted. Your